With a new democratic spirit sweeping the land, I thought it might be helpful to offer town moderators and selectboard members a little practical advice so New England won’t be left in the dust come Town Meeting Day.

President Trump’s recent immigration restrictions may be an irrational and perhaps unconstitutional response to an imaginary threat, but they’re certainly consistent with our history. Lady Liberty may lift her lamp beside the golden door but too often that door’s been slammed shut.

The late William McNeill, one of our greatest world historians, once told me that he only understood how hard it was to teach history when he realized his students no longer had any connection with the central historical event of his life – the Great Depression.

Pearl Harbor was one of those events history sets its watch by - a moment so unnerving that everyone old enough to understand what’s happening knows that reality has just been permanently - and violently - rearranged. John Kennedy’s assassination was such an event; as was 9/11. But history always tells what happened; rarely how it felt.

Nelson Mandela once observed that resentment is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill your enemy. That’s why the despairing, outraged anger we’ve seen following the Presidential election worries me, much more than the unexpected outcome. Yes, we’re honoring the peaceful transfer of power, but many of us are allowing anger to cloud our judgement.

Here’s my Inauguration nightmare. One night it’s Clinton-related; the next Trump, but otherwise it’s identical. At the end of the inaugural address, the House Speaker asks, “Mind sticking around? We’re starting impeachment.”

We’ve heard a lot about “two Americas” recently: haves versus have-nots, “makers” against “takers”, natives versus immigrants, those convinced government is evil against those believing government can help.

These days I flinch when I hear “You’re a historian”, words prefacing a bid for supposedly professional insight into the current election. Alas, to mix the words of historian Barbara Tuchman with those of St. Paul, history is a distant mirror into which we see darkly.

Trying to explain today’s divisiveness, some pundits point to an information revolution permitting us to choose news that mirrors our own beliefs and gives us our own facts. Others suggest the roots of incivility lie in income inequality and its ripple effects.

“Soon the Boomers will be gone and we’ll get what we want. We’ll disrupt the status quo and change the political landscape.” So spoke a young activist lamenting Bernie Sanders’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

On June 29th 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the “Federal-Aid Highway Act” authorizing “a national system of Interstate and Defense Highways”. Today, and $500 billion later, that system extends almost 48,000 miles through all fifty states and Puerto Rico.

Recently, a northern goshawk attacked me for straying close to the nest. When I posted this to the local birding list-serv, experienced birders told me I shouldn’t be specific about location and behavior.

This election cycle pits two powerful political strategies against each other. On one side, the “Big Lie”: the notion that an outrageous falsehood, the bigger the better, repeated often enough, becomes believable. On the other, what I call “More Rope”: the idea that, with no restriction and endless opportunity, those given to Big Lies will eventually over-reach and self-destruct.